


Those Things Which Go Bump in the Night

by anignoranthistorian



Category: Anne with an E (TV)
Genre: F/M, Ghosts, Ghouls, Goblins, hasn't anyone else ever scared themselves senseless?, hobgoblins for good measure, i cant believe im adding these tags, just me?, no one asked for this, ok, wow things are spooky, yet again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:48:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25044151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anignoranthistorian/pseuds/anignoranthistorian
Summary: It's Halloween, and Anne has convinced herself Green Gables is haunted after a few ghoulish encounters and bumps in the night. Gilbert, ever logical, ever reasonable, ever so tired and wishing he could go back to bed, is willing to give the house a look around. But only because it's Anne.
Relationships: Gilbert Blythe/Anne Shirley
Comments: 6
Kudos: 77





	Those Things Which Go Bump in the Night

**Author's Note:**

> After reading Jacqualine's latest fic, I'm in the mood for October. This fic is inspired by my strong desire for a pumpkin spice latte and my longing to be transported back to my childhood home and the living room couch, having successfully fought my younger sister for the remote. On the television is a cinematic masterpiece: Travel Channel's countdown of Most Haunted Places, circa 2010. 
> 
> Those were good times.

Twin braids trailed behind the girl as she darted down the lane, orange and gold leaves kicking up at her heels. The wind singing through the nearly-bare trees, sounding out as the branches swayed. She was left to imagine a ghostly choir crooning after her with each quick step she took. 

She looked to the grey sky and thought,  _ it’s as though October has burnt itself into oblivion, the last embers at my feet, the smoke blanketing above.  _

She didn’t allow herself to dwell on this, however, nor did she let herself dawdle: Anne would not be caught out after dusk. Not when she’d spent the last week convincing herself that Avonlea is, undoubtedly, tremendously haunted. 

At fifteen, Anne knew, perhaps, that she shouldn’t allow her imagination to run so wildly. But she still so often found the temptation irresistible. How could she stop herself from looking out into the autumn darkness each night after dinner, gazing up, up, up the hill to the orchard and imagining a greedy goblin scooping up the fallen fruit as the town settled itself to bed? And how could she be persuaded to forget the time a woeful, moaning cry coming from the woods, as though pulled from the lips of a banshee? And was that the sound of boots marching, leftover from a war she wasn’t even sure was fought on the island?

It could very well be. 

And so she hurried home, into the empty farmhouse left vacant by the adults in her family. Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert, and many of the others in the community, were gone-- visiting the city to settle some post-harvest financial affairs. 

At the prospect of having the house to herself, Anne allowed herself to indulge still further. From the hiding spot beneath her mattress, Anne pulled Eliza Barry’s ladies’ magazine, kindly lended to her by Diana. She flipped carelessly through the pages until she’d found instructions for a marvelous updo. Off she went to find Marilla’s supply of hairpins. Once her hair was sitting securely atop her head, Anne decided to focus her attention on Marilla’s supply of skirts, her curiosity bringing her so far as to try one on. 

She frowned. How was she to make it sit correctly when all she wore beneath it was her chemise and drawers? She returned to Marilla’s closet. 

In an old trunk, she found a corset leftover from a bygone era. She shook it out and inspected it carefully. With a shrug, Anne wrapped the garment around her torso and snapped it into place at the front. She reached behind her for the laces, pulling at them and watching her waist draw in in turn. 

_ Hmm _ , she thought. 

She finished off the ensemble with one of her own blouses, though it did pull strangely across the chest with the added corset. 

Finally dressed, Anne scurried to the kitchen, the magazine still in hand. She dug through the pantry, emerging with a small glass vial. She took a single clove from the vial and pulled a match from a kitchen drawer. Carefully, so carefully, she burned the clove, but only just a bit.

Staring at herself in the mirror, she ran the clove through her eyebrows.

“Ooh,” she said in admiration of her reflection as the night sky gave way to thunder. Dry lightning flashed. 

She made faces at herself, half pleased with her grownup appearance, half amused by the witchiness of it all. She wrapped herself in a black shawl and went off to find her copy of  _ Macbeth.  _

She took Marilla’s largest pot and placed it on the parlour floor before lighting all of the household’s candles. She grabbed a wooden spoon to use as yet another prop. 

Peeling open the play to the fourth act, Anne stood and began circling the pot-- her cauldron-- while gesturing with the spoon.

“ _ Thrice the brinded cat hath mew’d,”  _ she read aloud, taking on a nasally intonation.

“ _ Thrice and once the hedge-pig whined,”  _ she said, voice deepened.

“ _ Harpier cries ‘Tis time, ’tis time,”  _ she called out in the voice of the third and final witch.

_ “Round about the cauldron go; In the poison’d entrails throw. Toad, that under cold stone. Days and nights has thirty-one. Swelter’d venom sleeping got, Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot. Double, double toil and trouble; fire burn and cauldron bubble--” _

Again, a flash of lightning, a clap of thunder… and could it be, somehow, some way, a flicker of the candles? She wondered, indeed. 

She continued on with her hex a while longer, eyes closed as she gave a final turn. 

She opened her eyes to darkness, all of the candles extinguished. 

“Oh,” she breathed. Unsure what may have happened, she took a heavy seat on one of the sofas. She could feel her pulse in every corner of her body, it would seem.

Was there any reason, any at all, that all of her candles may have gone out in the few moments while her eyes were closed? She had no explanation. Slowly she rose from her seat and opened the front door, desperate for some air to clear her foggy mind. She looked down the road and off into the woods.

What was it that glared, out there in the distance? And what was  _ that _ ? That loud bump coming from the floor above? What  _ was  _ it? 

She found herself paralyzed, stuck between the bumps and thumps that came from her dark house, and the glow of the forest beyond, too frightened to go in either direction. She jumped as thunder sounded once more, and suddenly she was on her way.

She ran up the hill, past the ghost army’s road, beyond the banshee’s wood, and right through the goblin’s orchard. And without a care for the late hour, she banged on her neighbor’s door. 

Eyes squinting, Gilbert Blythe answered his front door. 

“Anne?” He said with a yawn. “What’s going on?”

Suddenly she felt very silly. “Um…”

His face contorted with further confusion. “What are you  _ wearing _ ? What happened to your eyebrows--”

“Oh, that hardly matters!” She declared loudly, face reddening as she pushed past him into the house. 

“Anne, what’s going on?” He repeated, following her into the hallway. She bit her lip and then muttered. “What did you say?”

“There are ghouls, Gilbert!” 

“Ghouls?”

“Ghouls!”

“There are no ghouls,” he scoffed. “There’s no such thing.”

“That’s what they want you to believe!”

“Who?”

“The  _ ghouls _ , Gilbert!  _ Obviously, _ ” she told him with a roll of her eyes. He looked at her sceptically. 

“Why do you think there are ghouls?” He asked carefully. And so she explained the perpetually marching army and the glow from the woods and the creaks and the squeaks and all of the many bumps in the night. 

“All right,” he said slowly, still eager to return to his bed. “But couldn’t all of that be just your imagination? Maybe hallucinations?”

“I don’t hallucinate!” She cried. She stumbled then upon a wonderful thought. “Besides,” she told him, face turned up in a knowing smirk. “I haven’t told you about the candles.” He raised an eyebrow, clearly doubtful whatever she’d left out would change his mind. “They all went out. Twenty of them. Can you believe it?”

“No,” he said frankly. “I can’t.”

“Well, believe it, Gilbert Blythe, because it happened.” She folded her arms haughtily. Gilbert was not proud of the attention he paid to the taught fabric that pulled across her chest. 

He coughed as though to clear his throat before laying a hand heavily on Anne’s shoulder as though to guide her. “All right,” he said. “Let’s get you home--”

“No! I can’t go back there! They are sure to be angry that I left at all!”

“ _ Who?”  _ He asked desperately.

“ _ The ghouls!” _

“Okay, Anne,” he said, tired now. “Let's go back to your house, give it a good look around. If everything is fine, I will go home--” She began to object. He held up a finger to quiet her. “And I will  _ sleep, _ ” he said pointedly. “And it will all be fine.”

She frowned. “I’m not convinced.”

“Of course you’re not,” he mumbled. “Because that would be easy.”

But she was already out the door. 

His lantern in hand, the two traipsed through Green Gables. Again, an eyebrow quirked when he saw the pot in the middle of the parlor floor.

“I don’t see how that’s your business,” she muttered as they passed through. 

He soon noticed a kitchen window was open. He moved to close it, giving Anne a pointed look. 

“Where,” he began, doing his best to keep his face serious and the incredulous laugh away. “Do you suspect these ghouls to be?”

She gestured vaguely all around. 

And so he began to methodically search, opening closets and trunks and cupboards, shining a light into each dark crevice the old house contained.

Conscious of the fact that he had Anne’s full attention, for once in his sorry life, he began to ramble only minimally coherently.

He espoused the virtues of the Enlightenment and denounced superstition, as any good man of science should. Then there was something about Voltaire, and a bit about Rousseau, but he’d only partially understood what he’d read so it was a bit half-hearted.

When he turned to face her, the final room searched with no specters found, she was quick to refute the evidence.

“Yes, but how do we  _ know  _ they’re not invisible?” She questioned. “And lying in wait?”

“Okay,” he said, letting the lantern fall. He stepped out of the room. Soon Anne heard him descending the stairs.

“Hey!” She called out loudly, chasing after him. “Hey! You can’t just go!”

“Anne, I don’t live here! It’s two o’clock in the morning!” 

“Yes, nearly the witching hour!”

“Anne!” He groaned. 

“All right, all right,” she relented. “What if… what if you took a nap? Yes! A nap. On the couch. And I’ll take a nap on the other sofa. How does that sound?”

It sounded like a scandal, and he told her so. 

“Oh, no one’s going to think that about  _ us _ ,” she said with a scoff. 

“Anne,” he said softly. “We’re not children anymore.”

“I know that.” She looked around the room, at the evidence of her play. Suddenly uncomfortable, she wiped at her face, a dark smudge coming away onto the back of her hand. She stared down at her boots. “I just frightened myself, all alone during the storm,” she said quietly. 

It was then that they heard the first patters of a downpour. 

Gilbert closed his eyes, his hand finding his temple in exasperation. 

“Well, you’ve gotten your wish,” he said. “I’ll stay until the rain clears, but you should sleep in your own bed.”

She suddenly felt incredibly guilty. Why had she lured this poor boy out of his warm bed, dooming him to a fitful night? 

“Gilbert, I’m sorry-”

“It’s all right, Anne,” he told her, though it was a bit forced: he wasn’t  _ particularly  _ pleased to be spending the night with her under these circumstances. “You can always come get me if you need me.”

She nodded in understanding. 

And with that, they told each other goodnight.

Shortly after dawn, the Cuthberts opened their front door, murmuring to themselves so as not to wake Anne so very early on a Saturday morning. Marilla had begun the porridge and Matthew had found his wool hat before either of them noticed the sleeping young man on their sofa. 

Instead of waking him, Matthew Cuthbert tiptoed past, right into the kitchen where he could ask his sister’s advice on how to handle the situation.

He explained the boy’s presence.

_ “What?” _ Cried Marilla.

Gilbert shot up at the noise, looking around him frantically. His eyes soon met the Cuthberts’. A blush rose to his face.

“Gilbert Blythe,” Marilla said. “What are you doing here?”

“Um,” he told them. “Ghouls?”

  
  
  
  



End file.
